SAN FRANCISCO – You might call Sparky a state-of-the-art schmooze machine. A chardonnay-sipping networker sidled up to Sparky, a "self-portrait artifact" by Marque Cornblat, whose most distinguishing features are a monitor and a surveillance camera. When asked how long she had been a machine, the human face in Sparky's monitor didn't miss a beat. "How long have you been a human?" she replied.
This was just the kind of exchange the curators of New-fangle, a multimedia art show here, want to spark. The show features the creations of 17 artists working in technology-based art and installations. The point? To make Silicon Valley's digerati a little more art smart, and more interested in sharing their wealth with the art world.
"Technology comes with a price tag," said Ken Coupland, an artist and writer and a New-fangle curator. He compared the industry to a deadbeat dad when it comes to culture. "The high-tech industry has a lot to answer for, in terms of not supporting the industry they've given birth to."
New-fangle is the second exhibition assembled by the San Francisco chapter of GenArt, a nonprofit group started in 1993 by three students in New York City. The group aims to foster alternatives to the gallery system while providing opportunities for younger artists. This has quickly made it an influential force. GenArt's advisory board includes Laurie Anderson, Larry Rivers, David Salle, and Louise Bourgeois. GenArt expanded to Los Angeles in 1995, and the San Francisco branch followed a year later.
Joanne Chan, the founder of San Francisco GenArt, said the decision to explore new media was due to the high computer literacy of the Bay Area. People here can appreciate work that is "content rich and not simply about mechanics," she said.
Chan said GenArt wants to make a "big splash" with New-fangle in order to bolster support for young artists while also broadening the arts community. She's hoping that a nonexclusive, fun event with engaging art at its center will encourage first timers to embrace the art world, both aesthetically and financially.
The works did not to attempt to define narrowly what new-media art might be. They ran the gamut from wall-sized projections of video by Dutch artist Max Kisman to fragrant, vapor-emitting nose masks by Neil Grimmer to J. D. Beltran's mixture of oil painting to video art inspired by the masters Holbein and Vermeer.
A large wall created by Co-LAB combined video 3-D modeling with dense text for a discourse on the endangered honey bee. The piece looked like a science-fiction command screen and attracted the largest crowd.
John Couch, marketing designer at Wired magazine and another curator, said new-media art needs to be promoted, even though some might dismiss the genre as a novelty that quickly wears off. "Have you seen it before? Yeah, you probably have," he said. "But it's important to keep doing it until it reaches a kind of critical mass and becomes a part of your life."
Although Couch said he believes non-collectability is one of new media's attributes, many of the pieces were for sale. GenArt San Francisco is trying to foster patronage of local artists in an area known for overnight millionaires who rarely sink their IPO riches into art. The group will soon release a booklet explaining the ins and outs of collecting art.
Kisman is in his 40s, making him one of the older artists in a group that is self-consciously young. He allowed that much of the work "maybe hasn't matured to the wisdom of a Picasso piece," though he said he found many of the pieces "charming." Kisman liked the idea that the exhibit challenges new-media artists to keep pushing. "You have to have ideas, not just electronics."
